Monday Made It…Lockers, Line Order, and Lunchtime

It’s another link up with “Monday Made It” over at Fourth Grade Frolics!

It’s getting to be that time in the summer whets I avoid digging into the heavy content things I need to address and, instead, tackle easy and fun “no-brainer” projects.

Today I addressed a few of those things and I thought I’d share them with you!
First of all, I went through my digital paper collection and picked a design from Sassy that I really like and matches my classroom perfectly.  I then set to work creating the “headers” for my different projects and selected some coordinating solids.

Now the fun part!  My first little project was an experiment.   I absolutely love these super strong magnet clips that I find at certain discount stores. I love them for holding up anchor charts and direction signs and so on because they don’t budge even if the paper gets heavy. When I bought some this year I couldn’t help but notice the little recessed circle inside and thought that it might be fun to decorate.
I tried cutting a circle to fit . . . got out the Mod Podge and
Kind of fun!  After that, I addressed three other “organizational” things that I use each year.  The first?  LINE ORDER and LOCKERS.
Several years ago I moved from having a line leader and “caboose” to having a set “line order”.  Students line up in this same order every time we leave the classroom and it has created such a smooth process.  There are no pushes, bumps, rushes to be at the front, sneaking around to be by friends, and so on.  I teach the students about being the first person through a door (we are upstairs so we have several doors to pass through) and how they hold the door and then the door holder simply joins the back of the line when the job is complete.  The next week, the person who was first in line moves to the back and the next person takes over the line leader position.  It really has taken away a lot of stress and wasted time!  I hang a sign in front of the class by the door so even subs know what order the students should be in.  I do NOT change it each week when the first person moves to the back–the students are fully able to keep track of this!
My students have lockers that we use and each teacher is given a bank of lockers to use–and fortunately we are given more lockers than we have students (for now!). The teachers in younger grades put cute name tags on the outside of their lockers, but the fourth grade teachers try to help transition our students to the intermediate school so we don’t use name tags, we simply hang a sign up with first names.  You’ll notice on mine that I skip a few lockers in the middle.  I always think about what it must feel like to be a student moving into my class in the middle of the year and getting plunked WAY down at the end of my locker line.  Instead, I build in a few empty spots in the middle so new students can be right in the middle of the action!  
NOTE:  These are not my students’ names…I made them up for display purposes! I will remake the list for my classroom once my class list is finalized!
After that, I kept going with a few items I use for lunchtime.  First of all, we need to take our lunch cards to the lunchroom split into milk only and hot lunch.  I love using these cheap pencil supply bags for this purpose, and I just simply put an insert in the small pouch reminding students to put milk cards in the small pocket and lunch cards in the big pocket.  Here’s how it turned out!
I also print off a copy of our monthly lunch menu to hang up by our calendar area, so I made a “background” for it.  Students refer to it every day, so I like to have it look nicer than a plain old copy stuck to the wall!  Once I hang this up, the lunch menu really “pops”!
So, I have another few items checked off the “These don’t really impact student learning but they make me happy” list!  Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Meg

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